A novel canard-based mechanism for mixed-mode oscillations in a neuronal model

We analyze a biophysical model of a neuron from the entorhinal cortex that includes persistent sodium and slow potassium as non-standard currents using reduction of dimension and dynamical systems techniques to determine the mechanisms for the generation of mixed-mode oscillations. We have found that the standard spiking currents (sodium and potassium) play a critical role in the analysis of the interspike interval. To study the mixed-mode oscillations, the six dimensional model has been reduced to a three dimensional model for the subthreshold regime. Additional transformations and a truncation have led to a simplified model system with three timescales that retains many properties of the original equations, and we employ this system to elucidate the underlying structure and explain a novel mechanism for the generation of mixed-mode oscillations based on the canard phenomenon. In particular, we prove the existence of a special solution, a singular primary canard, that serves as a transition between mixed-mode oscillations and spiking in the singular limit by employing appropriate rescalings, center manifold reductions, and energy arguments. Additionally, we conjecture that the singular canard solution is the limit of a family of canards and provide numerical evidence for the conjecture.